What happens to a community of oppositional artists when the purpose and meaning of their opposition are undermined by social transformation? Such was the dilemma facing many underground artists in Eastern Europe following the collapse of state socialism. In Up from the Underground, Anna Szemere looks at the underground based on rock music in Hungary, showing how it anticipated, precipitated, and responded to a period of fundamental change.

Szemere's work focuses on a community of rock musicians that became popular with Hungary's urban youth culture in the early...